Solo
by SaegerRyman
Summary: WataMote fanfiction: Tomoko Kuriko stories which attempt to be faithful to the source. Follow me (saegerryman) on Tumblr for chapter/story illustrations!
1. I'll Become an Athlete

Tomoko Kuroki stared at her brother.

 _She's freaking me out,_ his inner voice growled.

"There's one thing I don't understand, dear brother. Why are there stress circles under _your_ eyes? What causes _you_ stress?"

"You have to ask? More importantly, get out." 

Tomoko had already abandoned the attempt at conversational rehab through her brother, but she still routinely prodded him and probed for answers, because there was obviously something that he had gotten right that still eluded her. He had friends. He was popular. He was an athlete.

 _An athlete, huh?_

Maybe it was as simple as that. She was the least healthy person she knew, and also the most unpopular.

 _Coincidence? I think not._

Maybe the healthy among us instinctively reject the unhealthy. The mother cat abandons the runts and the weaklings, after all. And people are certainly no better than cats.

Increasing her physical prowess was a project that would require some serious thought, so she spread across the couch watching TV, contemplating her next move. Signing up for sports at school was no good. She already couldn't handle the least strenuous physical activity they had to throw at her. Tennis winded her, and basketballs had a habit of smashing into her hand. She remembered having once been good at running, back in middle school, but for some reason she couldn't keep up with the others anymore. She remembered that a school nurse once remarked that she had "a touch" of anemia, but she had dismissed that as nothing more than a side-effect of not eating lunch that day.

After school the next day, she came home with an armful of video game rentals. Somewhere in this stack she'd find her perfect sport.

She stayed up all night playing, and found she had a special affinity for Pro Wrestling Takedown Retribution 4. By morning, she was a wreck, and far too late realized she had left herself no reasonable amount of time for sleeping. All day at school, she felt weaker and more physically pathetic than she had ever felt in her entire life, despite the number of jumping power bombs she had delivered to the Great Buttflap just the night before.

 _My athletic career is already in the tank. Maybe I need a more realistic approach._

She bit her lower lip. Reality was, as a general rule, not Tomoko Kuroki's friend.

That night, she sat well away from the computer, clenching her small, blood-deprived fists.

"You will remain off. You will remain off. I will not turn you on. I will not find an excuse to read articles online. I don't need advice. I know everything I need to know. You are off, and off you shall remain."

She shot her gaming tablet a sharp look. "That goes for you, double."

After a full night in bed, forcing herself, Tomoko somehow managed to be a bigger physical wreck than she had the previous morning, after no sleep at all. But it was early. So early. She could remember being up this early, many times, but only after staying up through the entire night. She hadn't woke up this early on purpose since she was in grade school.

 _Grade school. That's the last time I remember being healthy. And I swear I'll be healthy again!_

In her mind's eye, she was already lifting barbells so heavy that the bars creaked and sagged dangerously on each side. There had to be at least a ton of plates at each end. She saw a big fat guy in tiny shorts and a tank top struggling to deadlift it, but he couldn't budge it, couldn't lift it from the ground any more than he could lift an entire bullet train. Powerful Tomoko Kuroki pushed him aside and picked it up with one hand, and curled it to her chin like it was nothing. She tossed it from one hand to the other, then spun it over her head.

 _I'm not delusional,_ she reassured herself. _I'm simply engaged in visualizing my goals._

She had decided to begin jogging in the morning, every morning. This would be her first step on the journey to health. She ran to the corner, then doubled over, completely winded.

 _That's a good start. Now I'll power walk back home and relax until time to go to school._

To the untrained eye, the power walk looked more like an exhausted limp, but never mind. She kept up this furious level of phsyical activity for almost a week, and by then began worrying that she had yet to make it past the corner.

Worse, she suffered progressively, more and more each day, from internet withdrawal. But she was determined that this time she would not fail, so the computer remained off every night, so she could get to sleep.

Not that she was getting much, anyway. Each night that week was spent mostly rolling and fidgeting around, worrying about what was going on, online. She also couldn't stop worrying about her lack of progress. She tried visualizing herself winning marathons. But even inside of her visualizations, she caught herself cheating. She got on the bus and rode all the way to the finish line, and cut in front of the other runners, just at the critical moment. Somehow that thought filled her with more peace and tranquility than thinking about sweating and straining and working hard.

 _This is it! The morning I really run. Nothing can stop me now!_

Tomoko finally blew past the corner, then two blocks down blew out her ankle. It was the same ankle that always gave out on her, if she tried hiking any unreasonable distance. Farther than the nearby convenience store, for example.

 _This sucks! How can I become an elite physical specimen if I'm forced to inhabit the body of a weakling?_

In the end, she had to give up her dream of becoming a world-class athlete, when the Science Club rejected her application, citing her sub-standard math grades.

Her only hope, after all, was to learn how to design an android body to replace her own frail frame. The technology didn't seem to be there, yet. But she kept the dream alive by researching the possibilities online, every night, late into the early a.m.'s, before finally going to bed.

 _It's a challenge keeping up this pace. Getting stronger and stronger, every day._


	2. I'll Get a Boob Job

_Why do they put things like this on TV?_

Sometimes watching daytime talk shows was like watching a freak show. The producers must really be after ratings. More importantly, this must be the kind of thing people watch when they don't have to go to school, and have nothing better to do than laze around the house mindlessly watching mindless television.

Tomoko Kuroki, who had faked another illness in order to skip school and mindlessly sit around the house, stared in horror as a woman with breasts the size of delivery trucks stuck out her chest on a talk show. But the audience applauded, and the host of the show leered over her with a dirty grin. _Asshole!_ Tomoko snarled inwardly, _and I bet he's married, too!_ Meanwhile, the female cohost giggled and asked if they're real. "Of course they are!" the woman insisted, laughing as if anybody believed her.

 _That's right,_ Tomoko sneered. _They aren't real. Anybody could have boobs like that. All you have to do is buy a sick doctor with a warehouse full of silicon. My brother could have boobs like that._

 _Heh._

The mental image of her so-cool little brother, with that pissed-off look on his face, trying to run across the soccer field with sloshing globes of fat surging up and down in his shirt sent an extra curl of wickedness to the corner of her smile.

 _Still,_ she thought to herself, looking down.

In her bedroom, she hammered the keyboard relentlessly, searching for answers on the internet. She confirmed her initial suspicion that there was no way she could pay for a boob job, even if she lied about her age. The cheapest operation at the Shinagawa Natural Beauty Clinic – _"natural beauty",_ _feh_! – would cost hundreds of thousands of yen, if not over a million, and she could just imagine what the cheapest boobs might look like. She imagined herself with a couple of malformed pyramids jutting out of her torso. It's where they buried the Pharaohs!

Or worse – "This morning on Happy Morning TV, we're interviewing Miss Tomoko Kuroki, owner of the oddest set of breasts in the world." Miss Tomoko was happy to explain her bizarre situation. "The doctor just got carried away and gave me three! At that point, I figured I might as well spring for an even dozen."

 _Cowbell._

There were also notes about how difficult the recovery period is, after surgery. One woman said that after a month, she still couldn't run, lift weights, or do any kind of exercise.

"Tsk," Tomoko said. _I don't do any of those things, anyway._

"Go big," one woman advised, because the implants (she claimed) wind up looking smaller than you would expect. _You get what you pay for,_ Tomoko sighed. Another woman warned against getting them too big, because they'll wind up bigger than you would expect. _I've got to be careful,_ she worried. _I'm still the shortest girl in my class. Anything will look pretty big on me._

Tomoko scrolled down the chart and found the premium boobs: Mermaid implants – _why, are they full of fish oil? –_ supplemented by fat stem cell injections.

 _Fat stem cell injections! Needles and knives!_ Tomoko shivered. There was something unnerving about all this. In her mind's eye, she could see herself strapped down to a table while some creepy man in a surgical gown and a mask crept up on her with a knife, ready to carve her up like a trussed goose. As he moved in closer for the kill, his eyes glowed bright red, and her hair shot up in terror and streaked white. She looked like the fucking bride of Frankenstein.

 _No fucking way in hell!_

She shut down all the browser tabs at once in order to purge the insanity, and held herself until the panic attack passed.

A momentary twinge of regret: _At least the bride of Frankenstein had a boyfriend._

A powerful lightning storm gathered around the old, dark castle, exactly as forecast. The hump-backed assistant dragged in the last parts left that the bride of the Monster was lacking: her monstrous, monster-sized bazooms.

"Here they are, master," he giggled. "They're in this sack!"

The mad scientist rubbed his hands with glee (which comes in convenient-sized laboratory sized bottles) and opened the sack."Good work, Eyesore! But, hold – these are big, but they aren't nearly big enough for the bride of the Monster. We'll have to make them even bigger. The Monster has huge hands, after all."

The hump-backed assistant giggled some more. "How do we do that, master?"

"Simple! Fish oil and needles."

The hump-backed assistant kept giggling.

 _What's his deal?_ Tomoko wondered.

The hump-backed assistant bellowed from his holding tank, as the mad scientist siphoned all the fish oil he needed for the operation.

 _Oh, that's right,_ Tomoko mused. _Hump-backs are whales. That's why they hunt them, for all that oil and blubber._

The hump-backed assistant flipped his fins over the side of the tank and giggled. "Are you sure you've got enough, master? I've got plenty to spare."

 _This is getting weird,_ Tomoko thought. _By the way, this is a dream, isn't it? I must have fallen asleep at the keyboard, again._

The enormous breasts of the bride of the Monster wobbled furiously as the mad scientist finished sewing them on to her chest.

 _Well, that bitch looks familiar._ The bride of the Monster was a Tomoko-creature. Her skin was pale beyond reason, as if her dead body did nothing but sit in her room surfing the internet all night, and tremendous bags hung under her eyes, probably from the stress of being a monster sewed together from a dozen different bodies. _Just like the real thing. In real life, all I'm missing are the million stitches. But that's the only thing here that makes me look cool._

Thunder cracked. It was time to give life to the creature.

 _Maybe the lightning will clear up my complexion._

Electrodes exploded and whirlagigs whirled out of control as the atmospheric electricty arced around the castle.

ZAP!

 _Zap? A lightning bolt hits the lightning pole so hard that half the castle crumbles, and the best I can do in my head is "zap"? I've seriously got to work on my onomatopoeia. Haven't I learned anything from reading manga? Let's see…KERCRASHAPOP! SMASH-A-CRUMBLE! WHAZAM-BAM-ALAMA!_

By the time Tomoko finished her brain fart, the mad scientist began singing into a microphone, while the hump-backed assistant adjusted the spotlight on him. "There she is, Miss America–!"

The operating table had been lowered back into the laboratory, and the Tomoko creature snapped her bonds. Tomoko-creature looked at her arms and hands. _I was an unpopular girl when I was alive,_ was the Tomoko-creature's first thought. B _ut now – look at the size of my boobs! They're about ten times bigger than Yuu-chan's!_

 _YES!_ Tomoko and Tomoko-creature cried in unison. _Something finally breaks our way! We'll be tit queen of the galaxy! Bring on that funky Monster, we'll show him what a real woman looks like._

THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!

That was the heavy footsteps of the Monster. It was half-past nine, and time to pick up his date. The mad scientist and the hump-backed assistant hugged each other in terror.

 _Or maybe they're gay and they're celebrating. I can't tell._

 _Wait, what kind of clothes am I wearing? I was wearing bandages or something, wasn't I? But I can't wear bandages on a date._

Tomoko-creature came into focus. _I'm dressed as a maid. What am I doing, cosplaying? And lightning hit me, isn't my hair supposed to be sticking out all over the place?_ Tomoko-creature's hair came into focus. _Huh. No different than usual._

Tomoko thought for a second she saw a streak of white running through Tomoko-creature's hair, but it was just a too-shiny highlight because Tomoko-creature's hair was too greasy. _I should try a different shampoo,_ Tomoko sighed.

THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!

 _Oh, right,_ Tomoko remembered. _Here comes the Monster._

Tomoko-creature looked up at the tremendous beast looking down at her. She laughed nervously. "He–he–hello…"

The Monster grunted. "Huh?"

"I–I said, he–he–"

The Monster spun on the mad scientist and the hump-backed assistant, who suddenly grabbed each other in terror, again.

"Thanks," the Monster said. "But got date already. On way to karaoke bar."

"Oh, right," the mad scientist said, embarrassed. "Well, have fun!"

"Master!"

"You're right, Eyesore. It does sound like fun, doesn't it? Hold on, Monster, we're coming with you!"

 _Guess they were gay after all._

Tomoko-creature stumbled to the castle window and saw the Monster with his date, the Blob.

Tears welled up in Tomoko-creature's eyes. "Even here. Even in a monster movie, and I'm still rejected."

Tomoko cried out to her dream self. _Don't cry, Tomoko-creature! You never had a chance! It's not fair, that's not just any Blob, you're competing with a Moe Blob!_

WHAZAM-BAM-ALAMA!

 _Whu–? Lightning?_

Tomoko woke up. As she suspected, she had slumped over her keyboard and gone to sleep. And, as the universe had its special way of laughing at her, a surprise thunderstorm had assembled directly over her in the middle of the night.

FWEESH!

Her computer screen went dark. "Oh, fuck. Power outage."

"At least my life doesn't depend on it."

 _I guess I'm supposed to have learned some kind of lesson from that stupid dream. About how huge boobs don't really matter, or some shit like that._

 _Well, screw that. The biggest life lesson is there are no life lessons. It was just a stupid dream._

"If I learned anything from that dream," she mumbled to herself, as she slipped back into slumber. "It's never trust people. They're all monsters, in the end. And we're…we're all…"

There was one more thought that Tomoko almost missed having. "We're all…more than…a bunch of parts. It's who we are altogether that's important."

When she woke up the next morning, she had forgotten having that thought, but for some reason she felt better about things in general. She promised herself that she'd stop by the convenience store on the way home and try a new shampoo. While she was there, she tried to talk to the cute cashier, again, and actually made him laugh at something funny she said.

It was the best day she'd had in a long time. And the shampoo smelled like peaches.


	3. I'll Be Fictional

**Since I'm Not Popular, I'll Be Fictional**

 _Hmm…_

 **Other books by Fuyuki Murakami**

* IQ42

* After Dusk But Still a Bit Light Outside

* Hokey Pokey Hokey Pokey

* The Elephant Plays Hide-and-Seek

* Wonderland Scrambled with Bacon on the Side

* Kafka Shipwrecked

* Norwegian Forest

* The Fluffy Windowside

* The Nejimaki Island Chronicles

* What I'm Talking About is What I Talk About When I Talk About Talking: Notes on a Memoir of a Journal as Told to Myself While Thinking About Talking

 _Crap! It'd take me all day just to read this list of book titles. How many books can one dude write? Doesn't it take like twenty years to write a book?_

 _Feh. Can't let that damn Komi-something-chan over there catch me reading manga again, though. I'll suffer through this as long as it takes._

 _Flipping ahead…aha! Here we go. Might as well try to get into this. I'll live vicariously through the main character, and it might be almost as good as watching anime._

 **Chapter 1**

 _From July of her sophomore year in high school until the following January, all Tomoko Kuroki could think about was dying. She turned sixteen during this time, but this special watershed meant nothing. Taking her own life seemed the most natural solution, and even now she couldn't say why she hadn't taken this final step. Crossing that threshold between life and death would have been easier than slipping on a smooth, slippery banana peel._

 _She only spoke to people when necessary, and after school, she would return to her solitary bedroom, sit on the floor, lean back against the wall, and ponder death and the failures of her life. Sometimes she would do this for as long as ten, fifteen minutes before turning on the computer and surfing the net._

 _The reason why death had such a hold on Tomoko Kuroki was clear. One day her four closest friends, the friends she'd known for a long time, announced that they did not want to see her, or talk with her, ever again. It was a sudden, decisive declaration, with no room for compromise. They gave no explanation, not a word, for this harsh pronouncement. And Tomoko didn't dare ask._

 _Pure chance had brought them together, three girls, and two boys. During summer vacation of their freshman year, they all did some volunteer work together and became close friends. Even after their freshman year, they remained a close-knit group._

 _The only source of tension among them was the uneven number. If they had become couples – boy, girl, boy, girl – one of the girls would be left out. And aside from Tomoko Kuroki, they all had one thing in common._

 _They were popular._

 _From the very beginning, this made her feel left out. How long would they allow her to remain a member of the group, an unpopular fifth wheel?_

Colorless Tomoko Kuroki – closed the book, sighed, and carried it back to the front of the library. "Put this back for me."

"Put it back yourself," snapped Komiyama Kotomi, the volunteer librarian, and Tomoko's recently acquired arch-enemy. "Stop trying to show off by reading books you don't understand."

"I understand that one fine. It's just too depressing. He keeps going on and on about killing himself, and I'm starting to wish he would."

Komi-chan was about to say something else, but stopped because Tomoko seemed genuinely depressed. It was as if all the color had run out of her soul, leaving nothing but a gray shell. Her shoulders slumped more than usual as she padded sadly out of the library.

"She's always surprising me. Did the Murakami actually affect her that much?"

Tomoko walked home under a cloud. _The more I think about it, the madder I get. What right does somebody like that have to kill himself? I'd put my miserable life up against his any day. Fifth wheel, what an insult to people with real problems! I've never had four friends all at once in my entire life._

 _Hmm…_

Or had she? She counted. There was always Yuu-chan, of course. Imae, the upperclassman – could she count her as a friend? She had said so, after all, but it wasn't as if they spent time together. Even Yuu-chan was only there for her sometimes, since she went to a different school. In her homeroom, a really cute bitch named Nemoto had begun talking to her, sometimes. She had even let Tomoko use her chapstick, that one day.

"Ha! That's only three! Wait – why do I sound so happy about that?"

The name _Komi-chan_ faintly echoed in her head.

"Shut up!"

 _Komi-chan makes four._

Tomoko growled. "Glasses isn't any friend of mine," she argued with herself. "Just because I can talk to her normally, that doesn't mean anything. I can only talk to her because I hate her guts."

 _It doesn't matter anyway. There's mom, and dad, and Tomoki, too._

Tomoki, of course, was Tomoko's brother, younger by just one year.

 _No matter how unhappy I am, what right do I have to do something – something like that, to them? You've got to draw the line somewhere. I mean, I fight with Tomoki, but…but…_

In her mind's eye, she saw her brother at her funeral, barely containing his tears, standing by her coffin. Some bitch was comforting him in his grief.

"Damn him to fucking hell. Using my death to pick up sluts, I'll get him for that!"

 _Besides._ She stopped, looking at something in the sky, nothing in particular. _I'm not popular, yet. What's the point in giving up? I want to have some fun before I die. If I die, I'll never have any friends, ever. And I'll be damned if I die a virgin!_

The next day, Komi-chan's forehead was twitching as Tomoko waved the gray Marukami novel at her. "Damn you! I just got through shelving that!"

"I wanna check it out. Gotta see how it ends."

"Eh?"

Tomoko left the library, walking straight and tall, as tall as a small girl like her could walk.

"Dammit," Komi-chan seethed. "The only thing that makes dealing with that bitch even remotely bearable is knowing she's a colossal idiot. If she stops being an idiot, I'll have to find another way to deal with her."

"Oh, I see." At home, Tomoko plowed through the first half of the book, and found that the hero eventually stopped having suicidal thoughts. "It's a phase. I'll have to remember that."

The hero of the book eventually found a girlfriend who helped him understand his pain.

 _Kind of like Yuu-chan. Sometimes._

The hero of the book went back and visited his old friends from high school, the ones who had cruelly abandoned him, to find out what really happened all those years ago. It turned out that one of the girls in their little group had been raped, and they all blamed him, even though some of them weren't completely sure how it could have been him. They had no choice but to believe the girl who accused him.

 _Bitch,_ Tomoko snarled.

In the end, the hero's girlfriend dumped his ass for another dude.

"Wait, what?"

Tomoko flipped back and reread the end of the book.

"After all that? All the pain and suffering he went through? It wasn't even his fault! All his friends abandoned him, and now this bitch, too? And who raped that other girl, the girl who caused all this in the first place? And who was it who killed her? Even Conan the detective wouldn't leave all these loose ends! Doesn't this bastard know how to write a book?"

Tomoko flipped back and forth through the final pages. She couldn't find any stitch of a happy ending, and finally flung the book across her room.

"Fuck Murakami!"

Colorless Tomoko Kuroki sat in the corner of her solitary bedroom and fumed. "I don't want to see or read another fucking book as long as I live." It was a sudden, decisive declaration, with no room for compromise.


	4. I'll Come Out of the Closet

**Since I'm Not Popular, I'll Come Out of the Closet**

Legendary Girl Alpha. Queen of the Otakus.

Tomoko didn't consider herself an otaku. Not a militant one, anyway. She watched anime and spent too much time playing H games, but she knew better than to advertise the fact. She was at best patron saint of the closet otaku.

Would that make Yuu-chan a goddess of closet otaku? Tomoko wasn't sure, sometimes – Yuu-chan's interest in anime she had begun to suspect was not entirely genuine, but rather an attitude she feined as a reason to keep up their friendship from middle school. In a way, it was flattering; it made Tomoko feel as if Yuu-chan genuinely liked her, and actually enjoyed spending time with her. It was the kind of lie she herself would tell in order to make somebody keep liking her.

But it also made the relationship feel a little unstable. To come apart, all that needed to happen was for Yuu-chan to drift away, which Tomoko could see happening, easily. Yuu-chan had friends who were normal, after all. Friends who went to the beach and did karaoke. Tomoko could feel herself becoming less interesting every day. What did she ever do, after all, but sit around at home?

 _Maybe I should stop treating Kotomi like a rival. If Yuu-chan lost interest in one of us, she'd lose interest in both of us._

Thinking of herself as just one of Yuu-chan's little pet otakus, though, made her feel miserable. She pulled out her notebook, while laying in bed, and started to make a list. In one column, things she does well; in the other column, 'sucks eggs'.

The 'sucks eggs' list was becoming distressingly long, in short order. She couldn't put her school studies in general in either column, as she was still just doing merely OK. She started out well, academically, but became discouraged when her grades were only average. Then her grades sank, and she overheard her parents talking about sending her to a remedial school. So she worked hard to pull her grades back up. And she did – she pulled them all the way back up to average.

Apart from that, she sucked eggs at just about everything.

 _Maybe I shouldn't have let go of the arms dealer dream so quick, after all._

She shivered.

 _OK, still not ready to make jokes about that._

"Maybe I'm fated to be just one of many. There's no shame in not being the frontman. I can contribute as part of a team. I wonder if I could cut it in a girl group."

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself wearing a cute costume, and learning cute choreography. She made herself stop, because she felt her gills turning green.

Sitting up and looking at herself in the mirror, she had to remind herself that trying to look cute was something else she sucked eggs at.

"If I join a band, maybe it should be a metal band. Looking grungy in that line of work is a plus. I can be sloppy, wear leather, dress in black, start smoking cigarettes, punch random people in the face…"

She didn't know why, but a wicked smile crept up on her while thinking about chains.

"Maybe I really should try that. It might be a good way for me to learn to be more aggressive. Hmmm…"

 _Shame I don't know how to play a musical instrument. But then, there's nothing wrong with being the frontman. I could learn to scream into a microphone really loud._

She stood up and struck a heavy metal pose. "Whaaaa–! I said I've HEARD! ENOUGH!"

Tomoko played air guitar for a minute, then imagined the guitar went out of tune and started screaming sour notes, and everyone in the crowd started throwing beer bottles.

"I guess it's the kind of thing you've got to be ready for, if you're a headbanger. I'd have to be hard enough to catch the nearest bottle from mid-air, then bite the neck off with my teeth and spit glass back out at all the assholes."

She gave her mirror the finger. "Check out my coda!"

Still, she had already entered the word music under 'sucks eggs'. It wasn't that long ago she tried to write a song on idol software. Turned out the software only made it "fun and easy" if you already knew things like pitch and harmony, which were complete mysteries to her.

 _If I don't figure out something fast, I'll wind up working in a factory for real, for the rest of my life._

The more time she spent on the list, the more depressed she got. She was awful at more things than she realized. If she were completely honest with herself, and just this once she would be, she wasn't even a very good sister to her brother, Tomoki. The only thing she could really count as a positive was being an otaku, but even when it came to being an otaku, she was half-hearted at best.

 _That moe pig on Plucky Star was supposed to be the biggest otaku who ever lived, and she had tons of friends and could even be a cheerleader, if she wanted to be. I've never met an otaku who was really like that, though. They're all loner shut-ins, like me. What does Sonata Izzyoume have that the rest of us don't?_

"Sonata Izzyoume would be in college, by now. What would she be studying? The otakus worship her as Legendary Girl Alpha, but what good is that on a resumé? What does it get you? Hm…"

 _Of course, she doesn't have a boyfriend, either. But she doesn't care. At least, she acts like she doesn't care. If anything, she's maybe got a yuri thing going on with Kirigami, the token tsunderé. Funny, I don't even have a tsunderé. Wait, is that supposed to be Kotomi? She doesn't really act like a tsunderé. She's just a pervert who wants to see my brother's dick._

"Wait a minute, I remember now! That moe pig worked in a cosplay café! She was always dressing up as Haruhi Sashimi."

Tomoko stared at her list. Cosplay would have to be another item for 'sucks eggs'.

 _Like everything else, I'm too timid, and I can't pull it off. I look nervous playing dress-up. You need loads of self-confidence to pull off cosplay. I've got the self-confidence of a bug looking at a fly swatter._

 _Besides, who just walks in through the front door of a random cosplay café and gets a job goofing around in a costume? Sonata Izzyoume obviously benefits from some kind of otaku in-crowd. It always comes down to popularity, doesn't it?_

 _I can't see me landing a job at a cosplay café. Nobody cares who I am, or if I even live or die._

Tomoko kept staring at her lopsided list, waiting for an answer to present itself. Nothing came to mind. She put the list to one side and groaned.

 _I'll never be popular if I don't come out and let people know where I stand. Even if I decide to be an otaku, it doesn't do any good if I'm only an otaku at home. I need to make friends, network, create a power base._

 _So I need to come out of the closet as an otaku. But as I see it, there's more than one door out. There's the door marked 'Hey, world! I'm an otaku, and I'm proud of it', and there's a door on the other side that says – what does it say? Time to grow up? Time to stop hiding from life? Time to stop pretending that your life sucks, and do something about it, for a change?_

 _Either door means change._

She sat up in bed.

 _It seems so hard, but change has to come easier now than later. What if I don't do anything to change, and time slips away from me?_

Using the internet, Tomoko put together a list of cosplay cafés she could reach by train. She still wasn't certain which door to take – or if there weren't other doors that she hadn't found. The closet she found herself trapped in seemed to have the potential for a hundred exits. But apparently she couldn't just turn any one door handle and step out. It couldn't be that easy, not for her.

The first problem with job seeking was her shyness in public. How could she convince an employer that she could be a cosplay hostess, if she couldn't even manage to speak clearly and ask for a job, without stammering and sweating, turning beet red, then turning to flee?

 _Maybe I should cosplay while asking. Maybe dressing up as someone else would give me confidence. It's all just a matter of acting, after all. If I can play the part of somebody with confidence, I'll be somebody who has confidence._

"Acting…"

 _Maybe I should think about joining the drama club._

She managed to ask the drama coach for a schedule. He was a cheery sort of man with round cheeks, and encouraged her to try out. She mumbled timidly that she was thinking about it.

In the end, she decided against it. If she couldn't speak plainly to the drama coach without stuttering, she would be wasting everyone's time trying to act. She could just imagine herself standing on stage trying to deliver lines while everybody else is standing around waiting for her to choke out the words. She'd get halfway through a monologue, and people in the audience would start yelling at her to speak up.

 _Tch. I'd rather catch beer bottles in my teeth._

When the drama club tryouts rolled around, the drama coach was disappointed that Kuroki had not turned up, after all. He made a note to himself to talk to her homeroom teacher. Such a shy girl reminded him of himself, when he was young and struggling with an embarrassing lisp. Maybe she could be encouraged to break out of her shell.


	5. My Neighbor Tomoko

**My Neighbor Tomoko**

"Fray-hay!" Satsuke called her little sister. "There you are! Be sure father eats his lunch, today. He's been awful forgetful since mom went to the big hospital in the sky."

"OK, sis!" Fray said. Since mother was now 'under observation' at a special clinic for 'kicking buckets', their father spent most of his days poring over a great number of scientific journals, which was odd since he was a semi-illiterate truck driver.

But then, their new neighborhood seemed to have had an odd effect on all of them, ever since they moved in that fall.

"You're off to school! I'm so jealous." Fray waved to her older sister.

"Bye, Fray! Be sure to watch out for the dirty sprites!"

Fray groaned a little. Since moving into their new neighborhood, her big sister seemed convinced that they were surrounded by 'dirty sprites'. These 'dirty sprites' stayed up all night, when you weren't looking, and were always doing dirty things. If you looked too hard at what they were doing, you'd become dirty, too. "I'm a little kid," she had told her sister, "but I'm not an idiot."

She didn't believe her big sister at first, but from the very beginning she found that her room upstairs was bathed in an eerie glow every night. She hadn't had a good night's sleep in weeks.

In fact, her nerves were fairly well shot, for a little girl, and when her father told her that it was trash day, and to go rake the yard because it was full of leaves, she almost lost it.

"Rake the yard, rake the yard! What am I, the _bleep_ ing leaf lady?"

She gasped. _Did I really just say – that word, out loud?_

Maybe it was true. The dirty sprites were already infecting her mind.

Next door, Tomoko Kuroki was dragging herself out the front door, late for school. _Goddammit, stayed up too late with that game, again. And now I gotta take out the trash, too?_

All she had to do was carry the bag out to the curb on her way out, but it still struck Tomoko as a tremendous imposition on her, considering she had to go to high school, as well. But as long as she was at it, she also tossed out her bag of trash, from her room. Didn't want anybody going through that shit.

But she hadn't tied it very well, and after dumping it on the ground, it fell over and fell open. Then a big gust of wind caught it, and blew it into the yard next door.

"What the _bleep_?" Fray cried. "Oh, _bleep_ , I said it again!"

 _That girl just threw her trash into our yard!_

There were tissues everywhere. Used tissues.

"I'm going to be sick."

By lunchtime, Fray had raked it all up, and tissues and leaves and all, and left the trash bags by the street.

"I'm going to give that _bleep_ a piece of my mind," she resolved. "Wait, where am I picking up all of these colorful words? Nobody I know talks like this."

Perhaps it was a sort of magic, as it was Tomoko Kuroki's bedroom window that was keeping Fray up every night. _Holy shit,_ Tomoko said to herself, stripped down to nothing but her tanktop and shorts. _I've never played such an intense game, before. The technology has really come a long way! Woohoo!_

She chortled, a dollop of saliva drooped out of her mouth, and she reached for a fresh box of tissues.

"What's with that eerie glow every night?" Fray wondered. "Could it be – the dirty sprites?" She pulled the sheets over her head, and tried to stay quiet, so they couldn't find her.

The next morning, Fray noticed that terrible bags were starting to appear under her eyes. _What's causing this? It's like a kind of evil magic._

She had remembered her vow to chew out that nasty girl next door, so she waited outside for a very long time. But today, she never appeared.

 _Where did she go? Did they move? Wait a minute – she couldn't be – one of them!_

Terrified, she ran back into the house, hid under a pillow, and listened to her father read long passages from books written in languages he didn't know.

Meanwhile, Tomoko Kuroki was such a wreck that morning, after staying up all night playing a particularly dirty simulation game, that she succeeded in convincing her mother that she was sick, and had to stay home.

 _So tempting to play on the computer, some more, but that would be pushing my luck. Can't let mom catch me up here playing a dirty game. I need to lay down here in bed, and surf the net on my phone. I can hide it a lot faster._

She did an image search on Gaagle.

 _Wow! They really do come that big!_ She appended her search with 'even bigger'. _Whoa, that can't even be possible! Heh, on second thought, it's how big I'd get if I were Yuu-chan's boyfriend. Oh, mama!_

The next morning, it was raining pretty hard, and Tomoko was pissed off that she chose the wrong day to be sick. Her mother made sure she was getting an early start, but, still, she couldn't help dawdling in front of the house, standing there holding her umbrella in the rain, trying to think of some clever new plan for getting out of school, two days running. A relapse, maybe? She couldn't pretend to get run over by a passing car. That would be a bit drastic, even for her. Besides, in this weather, she might really get run over while trying to pretend to be run over.

Fray ran up to her, carrying her own umbrella. She had seen her through the window, and remembered how mad she was the other day.

"Hm?" Tomoko heard the splashing, and looked down at the little girl who had appeared out of nowhere.

Fray looked up and saw Tomoko's long, limp, stringy hair, like a kappa, and heavy, black bags under drowsy red demon eyes. She screamed at the sight, and ran back into her house, losing her umbrella in the panic.

"What the hell?" Tomoko looked down at the little umbrella. _What was all that about?_

Fray had locked the front door, and held it as if an extra counter-measure against the invasion of evil spirits. _She's one of them! A dirty sprite! She's the one giving me these baggy eyes!_

"My umbrella!"

She unlocked the door and cracked it back open.

"My umbrella! She stole it!"

Tomoko wasn't really sure what to do with the umbrella that the strange girl had just dumped on the ground, so she picked it up. _Now that I think of it, what am I going to do with it all day? Maybe I should have gone back and left it with mom._

But there was no going back. By then, she would have made herself late for school, despite an early start. And she didn't think a stray umbrella and a weird little girl would be enough of an excuse to skip altogether, again. _Nah, got to face the music, today._

In the end, she just left the extra umbrella in the stand near the lockers, along with her own. She was curious by that time, anyway. She figured she'd take it back next door, herself, after school, and find out what that little girl was up to.

At home, Fray busied herself with drawing pictures of the wild Tomoko-monster she had witnessed that morning, and showed them to her big sister when she got home.

"I've seen her," Satsuke said. "Her name's Tomoko. Her brother goes to my school. She's weird, you probably need to keep away from her. Wait a minute, somebody's at the door."

 _Tomoko, huh?_ Fray looked at her scary drawings. She couldn't quite believe this thing was human.

"Oh, Tomoko!"

"Wha–wha–" Tomoko stammered. She didn't know there was an older girl in the house. Satsuke was just old enough to make her nervous, like those brats from Tomoki's school who showed up at their door every once in a while.

"Your, um, sis–sister, left–"

"Oh, her umbrella! She thought you stole it!"

"What? No! She was the one who–I mean, no, she left it, and I didn't know what to do, so I–brought it back. Heh."

"Oh! Well. Thank you! I'll give it back to her for you!"

"Th–thank you."

By this time, Fray had gotten bored with her drawings, and folded the sheet into a paper airplane, and was pretending to have it fly around the room while making the 'neeee-yow' sound.

"That was Tomoko. She brought back your umbrella."

"Really?" Fray said. "I didn't hear anything."

Tomoko shot the house an evil look and swore. "Two bitches living in the house next to me. That's all I need."

 _From somewhere nearby, music…_

 _Who leaves her trash_  
 _For you to find,_  
 _Blowing out of the bag,_  
 _Junk all over the yard,_  
 _What's with all those old,_  
 _Wet tissues, there?_

 _It may seem like a dream,_  
 _Just you try not to scream._  
 _It will be the same thing day after day!_

 _As long as you're with_  
 _To-mo-ko, Tomoko!_  
 _To-mo-ko, Tomoko!_

 _Playing her magical games,_  
 _Keeping you awake for a very long time!_

 _There's no escape from_  
 _To-mo-ko, Tomoko!_  
 _To-mo-ko, Tomoko!_

 _You'll be awake for a very long time!_

"Sis, when's mom coming home?"

"Um," Satsuke said. "I think I'm going to have to teach you a new word today, Fray. The word is _euphemism_."


End file.
